The Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s flagship conference, KubeCon Europe 2025, kicks off today and brings together adopters and technologists from leading open source and cloud native communities in London, England from 1-4 April, 2025.
Broadcom joins as a Gold sponsor with Booth #S241, and we have some exciting innovations to share at the conference! VMware, now part of Broadcom, has been a Top 3 contributor to the Kubernetes community for the past decade, actively driving innovation, collaboration, and ecosystem growth. Broadcom continues to support and advance Kubernetes projects that originated from VMware, including Velero, Contour, Harbor, as well as contributing to projects like Cluster API and many more.
Beyond these open source projects, Broadcom provides customers with an upstream conformant CNCF Certified Kubernetes distribution and Kubernetes runtime, VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS), built right into VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).
VCF delivers a single, unified platform for running VMs and containers. Users can provision and manage both VMs and containers with a single API that simplifies infrastructure management with consistent operations to tools.
Additionally, as shown in the figure below, the vSphere Supervisor provides the users self-service access to a comprehensive set of cloud services. VCF empowers cloud admins and platform teams with interfaces attuned to their preferences, including GUI, CLI and API, making it easier for teams to be efficient and productive quickly, instead of having to spend time learning new toolsets.
With vSphere Kubernetes Service in VCF, here are some key benefits to highlight for customers:
- One API to provision and manage both VMs and containers
A single, consistent API allows users to create, deploy, and manage both VMs and Kubernetes clusters. This simplifies automation, reduces integration challenges, and ensures uniform policies and security controls across all workloads.
- Self-service access to cloud services with governance
Platform Engineers can leverage self-service capabilities to provision infrastructure resources (compute, storage, and networking) on demand, while Cloud Admins maintain governance and control through policies and resource quotas.
- Upstream conformant Certified Kubernetes Release
VCF runs a fully upstream conformant Kubernetes distribution that is certified by Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). This certification ensures that the vSphere Kubernetes implementation complies with the Kubernetes Conformance Program, which validates upstream Kubernetes APIs, workloads, and ecosystem tools.
- Upgradable independently from vSphere
Kubernetes clusters and the vSphere Kubernetes Service can be upgraded independently of the underlying vSphere infrastructure (ESX, vCenter), reducing downtime and allowing organizations to stay up-to-date with the latest Kubernetes innovations.
- N-2 Kubernetes versions supported for flexible deployment
vSphere Kubernetes Service supports the current Kubernetes release and the two previous major versions. This means that vSphere Kubernetes Service ensures compatibility across three Kubernetes versions at any given time that allows different enterprise teams to run the version their apps need, and upgrade at their own pace.
Recently, we released vSphere Kubernetes Service 3.3. This release introduces several key features and enhancements that improve security, scalability, and cluster management. Highlights include:
- Support for vSphere Kubernetes release 1.32
With VKS 3.3, customers can now deploy workload clusters on vSphere Kubernetes release 1.32. Staying up to date with the latest Kubernetes versions ensures enhanced security, optimized performance, and seamless compatibility with modern applications.
- Flexibility to enable OS FIPS Mode
VKS 3.3 introduces a new configuration option for enabling FIPS mode at the OS level. Administrators now have the flexibility to enable FIPS mode for both Linux and Windows workload clusters. For organizations operating in regulated industries, FIPS compliance is critical for meeting security requirements and reducing compliance risks.
- Transitioning to Cluster API
The announcement also includes a streamlined process for transitioning Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster-based clusters to Cluster API-based bootstrapping and configuration. This shift enhances automation, simplifies cluster management, and ensures future compatibility with evolving Kubernetes infrastructure.
- Windows Node Integration with Active Directory
Windows nodes can now seamlessly integrate with on-premises Active Directory using Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSAs) for secure authentication. This update enables automated domain joining of Windows nodes within a designated organizational unit (OU) and allows Cloud Admins to add nodes to a specified security group for controlled gMSA access.
- Cluster Autoscaler: Scale down-to and up-from Zero
Clusters can now scale up from zero and down to zero worker nodes when using VKr versions 1.31.4 and later. This enhancement enables cost savings and resource efficiency by dynamically reducing resource consumption when workloads are idle, while seamlessly scaling up when demand increases. Ideal for burst workloads and seasonal applications, this feature optimizes infrastructure costs and allocates resources when needed.
Running a Certified Kubernetes distribution has significant benefits for customers, one of which is standardization and peace of mind that conformant solutions will work together. An excellent example of this is our recent work as part of our close partnership with Microsoft Azure. Made possible (and easy!) by VKS, last November we announced support for the Azure AI Video Indexer on VCF, and just a few days ago we shared that we now include support for Azure Machine Learning (AML) on VCF. This gives customers even more options when considering how to leverage a private AI approach when they need to run AI/ML models adjacent to their private data on-premises or in Azure VMware Solution.
We are excitedly looking forward to KubeCon Europe 2025! At the conference this week, the Broadcom team will be at Booth #S241, and will also deliver a number of breakout sessions for the Kubernetes and cloud native community. So if you are at KubeCon, come to the Broadcom booth to chat and explore the latest innovations we have for you. For deeper discussions, we can arrange onsite sit-down meetings with our leadership and technical experts to address your specific objectives and strategic goals.
Let’s talk about how you can benefit from the work we have done to make Kubernetes simpler, more private and secure. See you there!
